When we last left Geno Auriemma’s biographer Peter King, he was marveling over Mike Mayock’s travel schedule. How can one man be in both the continental US and Hawaii all in the SAME DAY?! That defies physics! He was also not proud to tell you he watched a bit of the Kardashians (MOAR FUNKHAUSER PLEEZ), and told you that he wasn’t gonna write about Peyton Manning, then proceeded to write twelve thousand words about Peyton Manning. There will be PLENTY of time to talk Peyton later this week, gang! For now, it’s important that we talk about how scary that Tigers’ batting order is!

So what about this week? Did Peter save his receipts from the Conrad Hotel? Was this game exciting for the seven state-like territories in the upper right-hand corner of your United States map-like object? And did Seattle ever give Marc, Peter’s barista, a raise? Well, let’s just see how he makes my latte first. READ ON. But first, a special announcement…

I’m not sure how long I’ve been doing Fun With Peter King here at KSK. Maybe since 2008. I THINK. Years and years of subjecting myself to Peter’s musings has deadened a legit 40% of my cerebral cortex. The point is, I stand before you today a beaten man. All the garbled syntax, all the stories that go nowhere, all the equivocating… I think all of it has broken my spirit. I don’t just think it. I know it! That’s why, starting next week, I’m handing full control of Fun With Peter King over to our own Christmas Ape, who will be injecting jusssssst the right amount of bitterness into this feature on a weekly basis.

Ape will also be adding the sorely needed visual components to this thing that I’ve been too lazy to cook up over the years. Furthermore, our new and improved kommenting system has allowed readers to enhance the whole “Let’s pick on this one person every week” experience, and that’s fun! Peter King is even LOFTIER once dirty Photoshops have been added to the mix. Trust me: You will not be disappointed with the new and improved KSK.

As for me, I’ll still be around, posting worn-out Tommy jokes and ranting about umbrellas. But Peter and I need a bit of time apart. He’s been a good sport, all things considered. I daresay there are far more thin-skinned writers out there (COUGHsimmonsCOUGH). And you readers have been kind enough to not point out that I write a weekly NFL column that is somehow even LESS informative and LESS about football than Peter’s weekly thinkarrhea. And so I thank you for your discretion. Now, for old’s time sake, let’s rip this little piggy a new one.

So many thoughts, many about Manning, in the hours after the Giants’ 21-17 Super Bowl win over the Patriots. Let’s categorize them:

1. Thoughts about Eli Manning, who I’d prefer to not actually talk about.

2. Thoughts about the weather. Don’t know how you beat that weather, Indy.

3. Thoughts about the Red Sox. You know where I stand on players openly drinking beer in the clubhouse, particularly if that beer isn’t Blue Moon.

4. Thoughts about Rick Reilly openly lobbying to get his son an ad job on Twitter. Quasi-McDanielsesque!

5. Thoughts about “Happy Endings,” which some of you told me to watch. Tell you more about it when I see the highlights.

I’ve noticed this about (Eli Manning). Football’s his job, and he likes it a lot. But let’s say God tapped him on the shoulder tomorrow and said, “I’ve got different plans for you. You’re going to be an architect.”

Eli Vandelay?

Manning would handle that pretty well.

BREAKING NEWS: Eli Manning capable of switching to imaginary new career assigned to him by Peter King. Can we make him a parking valet next? Because he would make a GREAT parking valet. I bet he does a great “This asshole with the BMW stiffed me” face.

He is a sick competitor, but he’d figure a way to satisfy that part of his life. Golf with the other architects, Friday night poker, trying to be a better architect than anyone else out there.

This is such a fully fleshed out alternate universe for Eli. It’s like watching “Sliding Doors 2.” In this case, the door would be designed by Eli, because he is an architect. Playing billiards with other architects, eating fancy architect food, fucking his wife while thinking about new shapes, etc. It’s all there. The mythology is quite rich.

As the pool reporter covering three full Giants practices during the week, I saw one series of plays that really interested me Thursday.

INTERESTING.

Saturday was my 20th Hall of Fame selection meeting, and not much has changed over the years.

Indeed. YOU STILL ALL EAT HOG.

/bitter about Cris Carter

…These voters, media people from around the country, are strong-willed and opinionated — many of them — and what resulted Saturday is not a big surprise if you understand how the process works, and who votes.

BERNIE MIKLASZ: I want to order from Panera!

PETER: I want Houston’s!

BERNIE: Panera!

PETER: Houston’s!

BERNIE: Tell you what: You get to order from Houston’s, but only if you drop your case against Cris Carter.

PETER: Done! THE SYSTEM WORKS.

There are two bones of contention coming out of the meeting — at least that I’ve heard from readers, Tweeters and other writers: the Bill Parcells snub and the logjam at wide receiver.

Bill Parcells would have gotten in if it hadn’t been for all the Jap voters. NO OFFENSE, JAPS. We know you have a hard time seeing greatness through those little coin slot eyes.

I can’t divulge conversations from the room; that’s against Hall policy.

FUCK THE HALL. This whole process is so totally idiotic. Why do they make the deliberations a secret? To protect voters from actual criticism, that’s why. Fuck the Hall. It’s bullshit.

It’s also against Hall policy to divulge your vote.

I like that Peter says this right before saying that he supported Carter’s candidacy. So you can’t say you voted one way, but you can intimate who you supported. This makes NO goddamn sense. If a voter wants to actually disclose his vote (and to give credit to Peter, he clearly does), then LET HIM. So fucking annoying. This is how you end up with a Hall of Fame located in Asshole, Ohio.

The NFL Man of the Year award went to the veteran Ravens center (Matt Birk). He beat out Philip Rivers and Charles Tillman…

“What? Huh? FUCK YOU, BIRK! I WAS CLASSIER THAN YOU BY MORE THAN A COCKHAIR!”

“Reading is a skill from which all others follow,” Birk said. “Mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles, grandparents, baby sitters … even Steeler fans … anyone who has instilled the love of reading in a child, this is for you.”

Couldn’t have said it better.

This is how Peter would have given that same speech:

“As a skill from which others follow, we underestimate reading. Watch CNN, fine. Read, better. That’s what Mike Brown does. He reads. Hang on a moment… gotta check this text from Steve Young… Anyway, read more and you could’ve been from Pittsburgh. Mothers, fathers, Puins, Whiteleys, etc. Reading is our Bogart.”

Listen to Tony Dungy talk about Jim Caldwell’s ability to erase mistakes from quarterback play, and you’ll be convinced that Joe Flacco is in very good hands with his new quarterback coach.

2011 Colts passing stats: 14 TDs, 14 INTs, 56.6% completion percentage, 72.2 QB rating. I think we can all see that Joe Flacco is destined for greatness under that kind of tutelage. MY FRIEND TONY DUNGY WHO WORKS AT A NETWORK LOCATED IN THE LOWER DIGITS OF YOUR CABLE GUIDE SAYS SO.

7. Houston (11-7). Scout receivers, Rick Smith.

That’s an order! Don’t go against Peter on this, Rick Smith. You saw what happened after Peter told Sibling Rivalry to get better with the coffee.

11.Denver (9-9). One week without a Tebow feature or a Tebow story of any kind… Good play.

Now, let me tell you what I think John Fox probably said to Tebow before this offseason began. He probably said, “Tim, you gotta get better.” That’s how I think it all went down. I wonder how Tebow would handle being a graphic designer.

“Hit me right in the hands. It’s a play I never drop. It comes at the biggest moment of my life.”

— New England wideout Wes Welker

Jesus, even Wes Welker overrates Wes Welker’s hands.

I asked (Ross) Ventrone for a poem or two. He has taken to doing Twitpoems, 140-character jobs he fits to Twitter.

I hope they’re as INTERESTING as the out-of-the-box poems about the NFL written by Larry Ferlinghetti!

I don’t much care for the NFL
Soccer is better
You smell that fart of mine?
A taste of heaven

Ross Ventrone is retarded. I expect Roger Ebert to retweet that poem five minutes from now.

Mr. Starwood Preferred Member Travel Note of the Week

Four of them:

1. Can you believe this lady with the sleeping mask blocking the way to the window seat?

2. Great town you got there, Grand Rapids. But where does a fella go for coffee round there?

3. Living in Manhattan means I get to take a $30 double decker bus tour every day. Still magic.

4. Awful hard to find you without a map, Providence Airport.

1. The Orlando Magic had a game Saturday night in Indianapolis against the Pacers. But by the time the NBA schedule was finalized after the season was delayed, the Magic couldn’t book hotel rooms in Indy for the Friday night two days before the Super Bowl.

ZOH NO! And I bet those hotels rooms charged MORE during Super Bowl week? How do you live with yourself, Westin?

So the team played Friday night in Orlando and flew to Cincinnati — the airport there is just south of town, over the Ohio River in Kentucky — and stayed in a hotel in Florence, Ky. That is about 112 miles from Indianapolis.

It’s the next part of the trip that boggles my mind:

Other things that boggle Peter’s mind:

-Baggage claims. How do the bags get there? WOW.

-Don Banks happily sleeping in a full size bed at the Best Western. Couldn’t do that if I were him.

-Roger Goodell’s sit-up regimen

-Tom Dimitroff knowing exactly where CNBC is located in his channel guide. That’s a thinker, right there.

At 1:45 p.m., the team boarded a bus at the hotel and went back to the airport, went through security, boarded a plane, flew 28 minutes to the west side of Indianapolis, deplaned, boarded another bus and drove 20 minutes from the Indianapolis airport east through the Super Bowl snarl to the arena in downtown Indy. Now, that’s a drive I’ve made many eight or 10 times in my life, owing to the fact I used to live in Cincinnati. I am stunned any thinking person, or travel expert, would suggest that the best way to go is to fly.

That’s an all-highway, 90- to 100-minute drive. The Magic could have left at 1:45 p.m. and been at the arena by 3:30, at the latest. They arrived at 4.

OMG!!!!!!!!!!!!!! THEY COULD HAVE SAVED THIRTY WHOLE MINUTES! They may as well have flown to fucking TAIWAN and back! Even Mike Mayock thinks that’s too XTREME! Why wasn’t this on the front page of the New York Times? RANDOM NBA TEAM COULD HAVE SAVED THIRTY MINUTES TRAVELING TO SHITTY GAME. Big story.

2. I love the Indy airport, by the way.

So humane!

Did you know it’s the only major airport in the United States that’s been built since 9/11?

No, because it’s untrue. (Raleigh/Durham’s new airport opened last year. I know this because I flew there last week. Such sparkly water fountains!)

Good restaurants, plentiful good coffee…

THANK GOD THERE’S COFFEE! Every time I go to the airport, I think to myself, “Boy, I hope there’s enough coffee here, given that EVERY restaurant here almost certainly serves coffee. I just want to make sure there are the seventy million hogsheads of joe required for a fucking coffee landfill like Peter King to be satisfied.”

Oh good. I’m glad you were comfortable. It would have ruined the game for me yesterday if you had been mildly inconvenienced. I hope the next Super Bowl takes place in a Burmese prison.

4. Until Saturday night.

WHO ARE ALL THESE PEOPLE IN TOWN?!

So I’ve had a room on the southeast side of the hotel, overlooking Victory Field on one side and the heart of downtown on the other. Saturday night, DirecTV had a big party at Victory Field. When I went to sleep around 11:30, I felt like I was at the party, not in a hotel across the street from it. Some band playing there had the bass turned up, and the thump-thump-thump of it was maddening. But I can sleep through pretty much anything, so I went to bed.

Woke up and the clock radio read “3:03,” and the booming bass was louder, and there was something vibrating in the room, like glasses clanking in the cupboard when you live right next to train tracks and a freight train rumbles by. In my room is a vase, and it sits on the marble-covered desk-bureau combination piece of furniture. That vase was rumbling ever-so-lightly on the marble top. I got up, took the vase off the desk and put it on the carpeted floor, and prayed that the siege from across the street would end soon. I guess it did. Woke up at 6. Silence.

I think you can all understand now why I can’t do this anymore. Right? I mean, it’s obvious. Hey, I stayed at a kickass hotel! But then people had the NERVE to party outside during the biggest party night of the week! But luckily, I can sleep through anything, which renders my petty annoyances all but moot! Then a vase moved slightly and I went back to bed.

YOU FUCKING FAILED FIRST GRADE STORYTELLINGOLOGY 101, PETER. Join us next week when Peter stays at a hotel and can’t figure out where the power button is on the remote, because the MENU button is so big and the power button is so small, and then Peter figures it out five seconds later and everything is cool. Then someone gives him free health care. FUCK.

“There were fewer people at the Maxim Party than are out there for the coin toss.”

— @PeteAbe, the Boston Globe’s Pete Abraham, who was not exaggerating. Much.

Maybe.

This is Indy hospitality:

Lots of Crisco and shouting!

Two friends from New Jersey decided late in the process to come to the Super Bowl. They couldn’t find a hotel room within 60 miles…

THAT’S EMBEZZLEMENT!

…and so I reached out to friends I’d met a couple of times at Indy Tweetups and gotten chummy with, Angie and Mike Six of Fishers, Ind.

Any relation to Tom Six?

/pictures Human Peter Kingipede

//throws up

I knew it was level-jumping, but I asked if they’d mind putting my Jersey friends up.

“You mind having my friends stay with you? You never know if it’ll be the Dunge!”

No problem! Have a super day! They got along fine, had a good time together, and made new friends. Cool scene.

And NO moving vases!

Henry Hynoski. Sounds like a fullback. Plays like one.

This means nothing.

e. Gronk. No agility.

Again, nothing.

3. I think Myra Kraft weeps.

Because that’s what corpses do. They weep.

4. I think my line of the night comes from Steve Serby of the New York Post: “You just don’t throw on Chase Blackburn.”

5. I think the league, the Rams and the city of St. Louis avoided one of the major headaches of the 2012 offseason by agreeing to a deal to put one game in each of the next three years in London Sunday.

But they’ll NEVER see Tom Brady again! Don’t know how you fix this, Angie Six.

6. I think the halftime show was terrific. Loved that Madonna finished with “Like a Prayer.”

But why didn’t she play any U2 songs?

Man’s Gotta Eat Dept.: Gene Steratore, the NFL ref who did one playoff game this year and doubles as an NCAA ref, was in Ann Arbor Wednesday (Indiana-Michigan), the Bronx Thursday (Marist-Manhattan) and Hartford Saturday (Seton Hall-UConn).

Three cities in four days? Get that man a roster spot on the Orlando Magic! He’s fly-crazy!

Interesting being with Randy Moss (the announcer, not the pass-catcher) Sunday for NBC on the pregame show.

COMPELLING.

Told me a great story.

Once he was in a hotel room and it sounded like people next door were fucking but it was just a cat!

c. Tremendous commercial about Chrysler, Clint Eastwood.

No, it wasn’t. It was awful.

d. Somehow, I don’t think Clint Eastwood’s an MMQB reader.

e. I’m gonna miss these butchered bullet points

f. Except that I’m not.

g. Play lofty for me.

Met Rooney Mara in the Giants’ locker room postgame. That was odd.

WEIRD. Who would have guessed a Mara family member would be in the winning locker room?

Nice, polite, gracious.

Respects the sun.

Know where she was a week ago today? Japan. Promoting “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.” Know where she’ll be later today? At an Oscar’s luncheon in Los Angeles.

DOES SHE OWN A TELEPORTATION DEVICE?! HOW IS THAT POSSIBLE?! MAKE HER A REF!

Also, Curtis Martin was always a good, reliable running back that you liked on your fantasy team because he was steady, but never talked about during his career as one of the top players at his position. Cris Carter was always recognized as being one of the best receivers. I don’t understand how C. Martin makes it ahead of C. Carter.

I can already see the angles moving around in his head: Well, the Manningham catch clearly wasn’t a catch . . . It’s Gisele’s fault! . . . Pass interference on Blackburn . . . Brady was roughed the whole game . . . It is my fault, I spilled Zima on my Pats shirt at the Audi party and washed it, thereby cursing the Pats . . . How does this relate to Larry Bird/2004 Red Sox? . . . punctuated with a “NO ONE DENIES THIS”.

I could be wrong on this, but I think RDU airport is just one of those airports that’s constantly expanding and renovating – it’s been around for a while. But I haven’t flown there as recently as Drew.

The next “door/cat” line slayed me, too.

I’m going to miss your weekly King skewer very much; thanks for all the great columns, Drew. You always had your finger on the pulse of what makes King so annoying, and this weekly piece helped me deal with my self-loathing for reading King in the first place. I came for the humor, I stayed for the therapy.

I think the thing that bothered me the most about this article was the “texts from 212″ bit. NYC cell phone numbers are given 646, 347, 718, or 917 area code. I have never encountered a 212 cell phone, ever.

Don’t know how you managed to do this for 3 years. I have to say it’s gotten a little bit stale, through no fault of your own Drew. PK has gotten worse and it’s become more painful than pleasureable to trudge through his slop he puts out weekly.

Thanks for the laughs on Monday morning. I wouldn’t mind a rotating takedown however. Spread that hate around.

This is my first season reading KSK. I’m digging it a lot, but I think Fun With Peter King has been my favorite bit. Thanks for some great laughs! The only downside is having to read PK first so it’s funnier. It’s like having to dig a big hole before you can enjoy a swimming pool.